As October 7 Deniers Emerge, We Could Use a Man Like Dwight Eisenhower, Again

Fighting in Gaza is paused, but Hamas propagandists carry on the war by other means. As they work to erase the atrocities of October 7, President Eisenhower’s foresight in documenting the Holocaust reminds us that sharing the truth can’t wait until after the guns fall silent.“Denial of Hamas’ atrocities,” Haaretz reported on November 7, “is gaining traction online as more and more people play down the terror group’s responsibility for its brutal murders, rapes, and destruction.” If a lie once traveled halfway around the world before the truth put on its pants, today it circles the globe at the speed of tweet.The West Bank’s Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote last weekend that “IDF helicopter gunships” killed the 364 people at the Nova music festival, “and then many Israelis in the surrounding settlements.” Others, like a computer engineer with an interest in deep fakes at Turkey’s Toro University, Furkan Gözükara, agreed.Mr. Gözükara tweeted on October 29 that it’s “a proven fact right now that Israel killed many of its citizens,” doing so for “territorial expansion.” This feeds the narrative that Jews — despite being native to Israel for centuries before Islam’s creation — are European “colonizers.”Soon after America’s 4th Armored Division liberated the Ohrdruf concentration camp in Germany in April 1945, Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, visited to bear witness, speaking to the living skeletons who had survived. General Dwight Eisenhower and General Troy Middleton on April 15, 1945 tour the newly liberated concentration camp at Ohrdruf, Germany. William Newhouse via Wikimedia CommonsDenazification began with Eisenhower and built a lasting peace. On his orders, German civilians were marched into the gates of hell. One camp liberator, Staff Sergeant Alan Moskin, recounted the process in the 2020 documentary, “Liberation Heroes: The Last Eyewitnesses.”Moskin helped liberate Austria’s Mauthausen Concentration Camp in May 1945 with General Patton’s 3rd Army. “I want you to take photos,” he quoted Eisenhower’s command as relayed by a captain. “I want you to get everything down.”Ike, according to Moskin, said, “I don’t want my grunts,” slang for infantrymen, “to pick up those bodies. I want you to bring people in from town.” No one was excused. All Germans were made to face the crimes committed in their name. “Whoever’s in these towns,” Ike ordered according to Moskin, “bring them in. Bring the trucks. Let them see the bodies. Make them put them on the trucks because, someday, people are going to say we made it up. They won’t believe it.”One could forgive Eisenhower for being fixated on the horror he could see, smell, and hear, not imagining in that moment that anyone could ever forget it. Instead, he began to write the first draft of history, inviting the press to record the horrors.Those who seek to erase the truth about October 7 are validating Eisenhower’s wisdom. A member of the Arab Israeli Ra’am Party, Iman Khtib-Yasin, told the Knesset Channel last Sunday that Hamas “didn’t slaughter babies and they didn’t rape women.”Ms. Khtib-Yasin cited footage of the attacks released by the Israeli government. The leader of Ra’am, Mansour Abbas, demanded her resignation. “There is and will be no space in our ranks,” he said according to the Times of Israel, “for anyone who denies or minimizes the severity of the actions which negate our values and also the religion of Islam.”Apologizing for her “mistake,” Ms. Khatib-Yassin noted that she hadn’t viewed the video but had relied on accounts from others. “I had no intention to minimize or deny the horrifying massacre of October 7,” she said, “and the terrible acts against women, babies, or the elderly who were killed in the south.”The swift action of Mr. Abbas is what’s needed to prevent false narratives from taking root. Eisenhower understood this, recognizing that the victors weren’t guaranteed to write the history even as Nazi Germany convulsed in the throes of death.Those who stand for truth may not be able to make Hamas apologists load trucks with the dead of October 7. They can push back hard, loud, and fast — marching deniers through the facts before lies have the chance to race around the world.

As October 7 Deniers Emerge, We Could Use a Man Like Dwight Eisenhower, Again

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